Friday, February 21, 2014

Mozilla bringing sponsored tabs to Firefox under guise of assisting newbies

Mozilla bringing sponsored tabs to Firefox under guise of assisting newbies

The 'Directory Tiles' on the Firefox browser's homepage will soon be occupied in part by the firm's advertisers, the firm has revealed.

In a blog post, Mozilla explained how the Directory Tiles initiative will be aimed at 'first timers,' with the nine tiles offering 'pre-packaged' content to explore rather than serving up a blank canvas.

"Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla's pursuit of our mission," wrote VP of Content Services Darren Herman

"The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as such, while still leading to content we think users will enjoy."

Transparency

Over time, those tiles will be filled with the user's favourite websites, as it is for those already using the software.

While the sponsors will be an inconvenience to some users, their addition is somewhat more palatable given the Mozilla Foundation's continuing status as a non-profit organisation.

"We are excited about Directory Tiles because it has inherent value to our users, it aligns with our vision of a better Internet through trust and transparency, and it helps Mozilla become more diversified and sustainable as a project," Herman added.


    






The Xbox One controller is changing - and it's because of Titanfall

The Xbox One controller is changing - and it's because of Titanfall

Microsoft has already announced that it will give the Xbox One's multiplayer features an overhaul in time for Titanfall, but the preparations don't stop there.

According to the latest word, Microsoft is also tweaking the Xbox One controller's precision at the request of Titanfall's developers who weren't completely happy with the behaviour of the current analog sticks.

Titanfall design lead Justin Hendry told The Verge that the current controls are "overly twitchy" and that the software patch will increase thumbstick sensitivity.

But before you go and list your controller on Ebay, the update will only be software-based. We've asked Microsoft to clarify the exact changes, and will update as soon as we know more.

However, this isn't the first time that game developers have had an impact in the design process. Killzone's Guerilla Games had its own say in the creation of the PS4's Dualshock 4, for example.

Remote play

Meanwhile, Amazon seems to have just outed the as-yet-announced Xbox One media remote. Engadget spotted that the device had popped up on Amazon Canada for a short while before someone spotted the mistake and pulled it off.

But it's now been spotted over on Amazon UK too with a price of £19.99 (It was around US$23 converted on the Canadian site, so about $AU25).

The image has been taken down but the page says the device will start shipping on April 4, while Amazon Canada said March 4.

Microsoft is yet to announce its media remote officially, but you can bet your mortgage that we'll hear something very soon.


    






Interview: AMD on Mantle: We want our graphics API to become the industry standard

Interview: AMD on Mantle: We want our graphics API to become the industry standard

Mantle has been a story of fits and starts. But with this week's release of the Catalyst 14.1 beta driver and a pair of game patches, AMD's vision for a low-level, graphics-boosting API is finally starting to take flight.

There's plenty of work to be done - the driver is still in beta, after all - but with its release, the effects of Mantle can be implemented by anyone who likes (albeit with some limitations).

Mantle's benefits are promising, but right now its dependence on Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture keeps it well within AMD's gates. With the company's talk of Mantle improving PC gaming not only for game makers, but for those who play them too, we wanted to know whether AMD would ever open the API to other companies, including its fiercest rivals.

The answer, it turns out, is yes.

Mantle, or something like it

AMD told TechRadar that it'd be willing to make Mantle, or an API based on it, available across the industry. Even, the company said, if it means Mantle is adopted by competitors like Nvidia.

"Mantle for now is straight up in a closed ecosystem, a closed beta, which you have to do in a complicated project like this to get it off the ground. It's us and a few key game developers," Robert Hallock, technical communications, AMD Graphics & Gaming, told us in a recent interview.

"After that phase is done, we do hope that Mantle becomes an industry standard. We'll be releasing a public SDK later this year, and hope that others adopt it. If they don't adopt it itself, then we hope they adopt APIs similar to it that become an industry standard for PC gaming."

How open can you go?

It's a nice sentiment, but does that mean AMD is willing to allow an entity traditionally viewed from behind enemy lines make use of Mantle?

"It's hard to say," Hallock said. "If we want it to be an industry-wide API or inspire an industry-wide API, that would mean adoption from Nvidia in some way, shape or form. I can't speak from an architectural level what that would require of them to change."

"But for the good of gamers, [we] would want one ultimate specification that is either Mantle itself or one similar to it. As Highlander said, 'There can only be one.'"

Nvidia

We asked Nvidia for its thoughts on Mantle and whether it would ever consider adopting the API, but were told that since Mantle isn't open and the company has never seen it, it couldn't comment.

Hallock explained that while it's currently dependent on GCN, Mantle "utilizes a certain level of meaningful hardware abstraction that could eventually allow it to be applicable to other architectures."

"Such applicability," he continued, "is necessary in an ecosystem we hope to grow as an industry standard in the years ahead."

PC thumbprint

AMD has maintained that Mantle will succeed because it was built with the in-put of game developers who wanted to nab better graphics performance with minimal overhead from the machines running their titles.

Hallock relayed some of the feedback developers have had around Mantle, and while he revealed it takes devs longer to bring up a game using the API, the perks quickly become evident.

"It's sort of a simpler, more obvious API with really robust error and obstruction tools," he said. "[Developers] can see what's going wrong [as they develop a game], and it saves time for them."

DICE was the first game dev on the good ship Mantle, but Oxide, Cloud Imperium, and Eidos-Montreal have since jumped on board. Hallock couldn't name future game developers who will join the Mantle march, but said AMD expects more will be announced as the year goes on.

BF4

And though a Mantle-enabled Battlefield 4 was supposed to be the API's big coming out party late last year, a hold-up on EA's end pushed back the release.

"We were all a little disappointed," Hallock said of the BF4 delay. "I think we all wanted it to come out in December, but software is a fickle thing. It's unfortunate, but in the grand scheme it's not a big blow. People will be happy and appreciate the extra time that was invested. It is what it is for us."

EA pushed out its Mantle renderer for BF4 last week, and in announcing the release, Frostbite Technical Director Johan Andersson wrote that thanks to the API, "we've significantly reduced CPU cost in our rendering, efficiently parallelized it over multiple CPU cores and reduced overhead in many areas," in addition to improvements to the GPU workload.

That, it seems, would be music to Hallock's ears.

"We hope to put our thumbprint on the industry to show that these lower level APIs for mid-range CPUs is the right way to do it on the PC," he said during our interview. Time, and more games, will tell if that thumbprint sticks.


    






Thursday, February 20, 2014

Steam's new user-tagging feature wants Skrillex fans to play Farm Simulator

Steam's new user-tagging feature wants Skrillex fans to play Farm Simulator

Valve's just made searching through its mammoth catalogue a bit easier, letting gamers add their own tags to its store titles.

It's pretty self-explanatory. Go to any game on Steam and bang in the label you want, then anyone searching for that word, however specific it might be, will find it.

Yes, it's a system just begging to be abused. Some of our favourite tags include:

  • Ski Region Simulator - "High impact sexual violence"
  • Farming Simulator 2011 - "Dubstep", "Skrillex"
  • Barbie Dreamhouse Party "Post-apocalyptic", "Horror"
  • Resident Evil 5 - "Boulder punching sim"
  • Airport Simulator 2014 - "Procedural death labyrinth"
  • Critter Crunch - "Vomiting on your children"
  • Half-Life 2: Episode 2 - "Almost Half-Life 3"
  • Dark Souls - "Git gud or die tryin'"
  • Dark Fall: Lost Souls - "Not Dark Souls"

As for tagging Farming Simulator 2013 as "Need for Speed", well that's just cruel.

  • Those Steam boxes are just around the corner, but which Steam Machine should you buy?